-Hindustan Times New Delhi: India’s forests are worth as much as the combined market value of BSE-listed companies with a notional value of Rs 115 trillion but the money collected from diverting parts of this land for industries won’t go to communities that live in and are dependent on the jungles. The Union environment ministry accepted most recommendations of a 2013 expert panel that hiked the rates at which industrialists pay for...

-The Hindu Democracies are not sustained by obedient productive units in so-called knowledge-based economies. But that is precisely what the new National Education Policy envisages “Public policy,” according to Douglas Gomery, “is the making of governmental rules and regulations to benefit not one individual but society as a whole. It asks, what is the best way to conceive and evaluate policies aimed at the public as a whole and its various subgroups?”...

-The Times of India AHMEDABAD: With the prices of tur dal and other pulses skyrocketing, to between Rs 155 and Rs 180 a kg, farmers in the state are increasingly choosing to sowing pulses. The area sown with tur, urad and other pulses in the state has risen by 77% from last year. The area sown with pulses was 5.81 lakh hectares this year, while this number was 3.28 lakh ha...

-Hindustan Times Mumbai: The government’s ambitious plan to interlink India’s rivers for better distribution of water across the country may need to be tweaked to factor in the effects of climate change. An analysis of weather data for 103 years (1901 to 2004) by researchers from the Indian Institutes of Technology in Mumbai and Chennai shows that rainfall has decreased over the years, reducing water stocks even in river basins that have...

-Business Standard The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill was passed by Parliament amid intense debate over how best India can conserve its forests * Why were the Congress, the Left and tribal activists, including some RSS-affiliated bodies, against the Bill in its present shape? They wanted that the money not be spent on Traditional forest lands without the consent of tribals and other forest dwellers. * Why did they want so? India has at least 400...